Dubai—The novel coronavirus pandemic is still accelerating and its effects will be felt for decades, the World Health Organization’s director-general told an online conference on Monday.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual health forum organised by Dubai authorities that the greatest threat facing the world is not the virus itself, but “the lack of global solidarity and global leadership.”
“We cannot defeat this pandemic with a divided world,” he said.
“The politicization of the pandemic has exacerbated it. None of us is safe until all of us are safe.”
Meanwhile, health officials in South Korea believe the country is going through a second wave of coronavirus, despite recording relatively low numbers.
The country had been a success story in dealing with COVID-19, but now expects the pandemic to continue for months, the BBC reported.
Head of the Korea Centers for Disease Control (KCDC), Jung Eun-kyeong, said the first wave lasted up until April. Yet since May, clusters of new cases have grown, including outbreaks at nightclubs in the capital, Seoul.
Between those periods, daily confirmed cases had fallen from nearly a thousand to zero infections recorded for three days in a row.
Officials on Monday said that over the last 24 hours, 17 new infections had been recorded, from different clusters in large offices and warehouses.
Dr Jeong said the recent resurgence had led her to conclude that the country was in the grip of a second wave of the virus, and that she expected it to continue.
Until now, the KCDC had said that South Korea's first wave had never really ended.
But Dr Jeong said it was now clear that a holiday weekend in early May marked the beginning of a new wave of infections focused in the greater Seoul area, which had previously seen only a few cases.
The WHO warned last week of a new and dangerous phase of the coronavirus pandemic, with people tiring of lockdowns despite the disease’s rapid spread.
The COVID-19 illness, which has now killed more than 465,000 people and infected almost nine million worldwide, is surging in the Americas and parts of Asia, even as Europe starts to ease restrictive measures.
Lockdowns imposed to halt the spread of the virus have caused crippling economic damage, but the WHO says the pandemic still poses a major threat.
“The pandemic is still accelerating,” Tedros told the virtual conference.
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“We know that the pandemic is much more than a health crisis, it is an economic crisis, a social crisis, and in many countries a political crisis,” he said.
“Its effects will be felt for decades to come.”
A vaccine remains months off at best despite several trials, while scientists are still discovering more about the virus, its symptoms and the extent to which it may have spread before being identified.
Earlier on Monday, the city of Daejeon, south of the capital, announced it would ban gatherings in public spaces such as museums and libraries after a number of small virus clusters were discovered.
The mayor of Seoul also warned that the capital may have to return to strict social distancing, should cases top 30 on average over the next three days and the bed occupancy rate of the city's hospitals exceeds 70%.
South Korea has managed to avoid locking down the country and has instead relied on voluntary social distancing measures alongside an aggressive track, trace, and test strategy to combat the virus.
A total of 280 people have died since the country reported its first case on January 20. Overall, more than 12,000 infections have been recorded and it is thought that currently there remain 1,277 active cases in the country.
